As is well known, most municipal plumbing and sanitary codes require that means be provided for supplying water automatically to sewer line water traps. This ensures that the traps will be operative at all times.
The economical provision of such traps to service a multiple plumbing installation presents a problem to the contractor. Such installations occur for example in supermarkets where there may be 50 or 60 refrigerated display cases, each with its own drain to the sewer line. They may occur also in apartment houses and business buildings, where there are multiple sewer drains associated with a plurality of lavatories, laundry rooms etc.
It is the usual practice to stub off in the wall at some central point the tubing leading to cluster of such installations. It then is required to provide a connection to each of the plumbing units.
It is the general purpose of the present invention to provide a drain trap primer valve assembly for use in such a situation, in the connection of multiple drain traps to a source of priming water.
It is a particular purpose of the invention to provide such an assembly which is available as a low cost compact, unit characterized by ease of installation and inspection, efficiency of operation, and uniformity of priming water distribution to all of the plumbing units which it serves.
The foregoing and other purposes of the invention are accomplished by the provision of a plumbing conduit system including a house line carrying water under pressure and a plurality of branch lines, each serving the drain trap of a particular plumbing fixture. Connected into the house line is a manifold having a plurality of discharge openings, one for each branch line. A plurality of couplings couple the branch line to the manifold openings, one to each opening. Each coupling includes a flow orifice of a size predetermined to substantially equalize the flow of priming water to each branch line.
Upstream from the manifold in the house line there is provided a time-clock-controlled valve positioned for opening the house line to the flow of priming water to the branch lines at predetermined time intervals, thereby accomplishing the desired trap function of ensuring that all of the multiple traps are filled uniformly with water at all times.